Idea to fix controversy about healer dps.

[RopeDrink]

To the person/people spewing out the "I don't pay their sub / you don't pay my sub" trollop, bear in mind everyone else is paying their subscription too, hence such comments cancel themselves out. It's an MMORPG - a team game. If you're not winging it solo then you're in a group with people who also pay their subs, so just because one fancies a bit of 'spam cure on the 99% health tank for 30-45mins' or 'medica/regen and watch everyone else do the fighting while I eat my dinner', them paying their subscription does nothing to/for what is expected by the rest of the team (which I know is a variable). Yes, Duty Finder will always cobble together random people with random motives and mindsets, yet everything said in all of these countless circular debates is plain common sense -- there is no reason to do 'nothing' during downtime. Zip. Nadda. None whatsoever.

Killing enemies results in less healing required and also happens to result in speedier clears. Yes, other players are specialized for this aspect, which doesn't magically render your ability to contribute non-existent. Any Healer (or even a Tank) saying no to this win-win gives me the impression they are either lazy, trolling, or just plain bad. Even if you're a nervous or cautious healer, there is ample time in any form of content to gauge your team and get a mental-average of how much rope you'll be given each pull. That's my first port of call in any dungeon, to test the water during the first pack. If the DPS is low overall, I'll know. If the tank is relatively squishy, I'll know. If the team has the reaction time of an arthritic snail on crystal meth, thus eat mechanics like a starving hobo, I'll know - and all that info gives me a good idea of how I may have to tweak my own play to suit the rest >>> this goes both ways - when the team has a fair idea of how competent I am at keeping them alive, they can judge whether to reign in the charge, or push the envelope further.

The team is a machine. A good one oils itself and flows. A bad one has rusty cogs, or cogs that want to do things their own way, when they really should be working in as close to 'tandem' as can be reached. The debate exists simply because next-to-nobody can ever (in their right mind) agree that it is A-OK for someone to AFK on reaching bare minimum. If you saw a tank using one or two Overpowers/Flashes to top enmity, then AFK for the rest of the fight, this would be equally as unaccepted as what we have here. Same goes for DPS who randomly decide they don't want to use half their toolbar for no discernable reason. So, why do some Healers think they can get a pass when others most definitely wouldn't?

Sad to say I met another glorious AFK-Healer earlier, casually watching three others actively doing everything possible to get things dead while they simply stood there watching, maybe throwing out the odd Cure, to which I asked why they didn't consider just throwing stones rather than watching the geared tank take next-to-no damage while we slaved away doing the grunt-work. People need to understand that it is not about Healers 'sacrificing everything for the sake of mad-healer-deeps', it the simple fact that if Healing isn't required, you would be doing yourself (and everyone else) a huge service by, you know, pressing those non-Healer buttons you learned while levelling, which in itself would have required you to do the exact same thing - DPS mobs while keeping an eye on your healthbar + a few extra. It's really not that difficult to execute or fathom. Nor is it hard to grasp that requesting this common-sense isn't identical to asking for 'optimal end-game deeps' or neglecting your primary role of keeping people alive.

[Gemina]

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post3007437

Remember that when a new tier comes out, people aren't geared yet. Like, if this tier was set for DPS at ilvl 350 for savage, nobody had that on day 1. Thus, if you want to clear on day 1, healer DPS is mandatory. You don't see any early clear groups with pure healers. There's just no room to carry people at that level.

That link provided is the impression I am under.

Yes. Since all DPS jobs will be increasing up through level 60, it makes sense to have the white mage's DPS extend by a proportional amount as well. For development, such as with Bahamut's Coils, the development team assumes what the item level should be for general equipment on players when they clear a raid. They sum up the basic DPS for four DPS and tanks at that assumed item level and cut that by about 10-15% for the minimum clear DPS. Healer DPS is not taken into account when this is set.

This first part that I bolded, what this says is that healer DPS, specifically WHM in this case, should increase along with everyone else through level 60. Which makes sense. Furthermore, this is a separate statement from the next, and no matter how you want to dissect it, it boils down to 4 DPS and tanks at an assumed ilv (whatever that means), and then they even cut it by 10-15% (likely to allow for KOs and recovery). Then, in a separate statement: "Healer DPS is not taken into account when this is set". Whatever ilv they're clearing stuff at, what's for certain is that healer DPS isn't a factor AT ALL. If this is a higher ilv than what is currently available to the playerbase, then I humbly bow and thank you for the correction. If not, then I don't know, the group needs to perform better I guess?

It's not equivalent, that's the thing. Go to the tank forum and pitch a tank that's idle 50% of the time or more. Nobody will defend it. Go to the DPS forum and pitch it. Nobody will the defend it.

Not only do I frequent the tanking forums. I also play one, and have ran it through all content through lv60 since I don't have SB. The majority of it synced. No one, and I do mean no one is going to even attempt to defend an idle tank. The controversy on that forum that is even remotely related to healer DPS are tanks that stay in tank stance 100% of the time, and spam their agro combo. Again, this is the equivalent to a heals-only healer. They are doing the bare minimum by doing this, and generating more agro than is necessary on trash and bosses (similar to over healing), but they are doing nothing to add to the damage pool other than their innate agro combo potencies, which are negligible in comparison to an offensive tank and still keeping hate.

It's only among the healers that anyone at all thinks this behavior is acceptable. I'm fairly sure that psychology comes from other games where the healer role is almost entirely healing focused and there's much less time/MP to do anything else. And while that's fine, exporting that here doesn't work because that's not the game we have.

I agree with you 100%. The psychology doesn't even come from other games; it comes from the term itself, "Healer". And it is the game we have. Like I pointed out earlier; heals-only healers are still clearing content. This in itself indisputably makes healer DPS mandatory entirely false. Don't put the knife to my throat though. If you have an issue with that, then the issue lies with the design of our current content, which I already stated is a problem. But I also stated it is not as big of a problem as everyone makes it out to be. If someone one wants to argue with that, I am all ears.

If it's the game people want to have, that's a seperate issue. What healing should look like in 5.0 is fair game, but it doesn't change what we have right now.

I'm afraid it is the same issue. Because it is not the game people want to have, it is the game we currently have. That's the reason why heals-only healers are on the defense, and the offensively minded propose a change in gameplay. But is it really so bad that you believe the way healing is currently designed needs to be changed? Before you answer that, don't think I am implying that this is the wrong mentality. However, I really want you to think about the proposed changes and the long-term effect on the game and the community. Does QoL get better? Queue times for everyone? Savage clear rates? Does the game overall, improve over something like all healers all of a sudden adopting the 'DPS first, heal when needed' mentality. If you truly believe that, then fine. I respect that.

[Zojha]

That link provided is the impression I am under.

And that link is a different way to phrase:
https://www.bluegartr.com/threads/12...tions-requests
(incidentally, the interview is but a few months older)

Let's get right into it - we've seen many posts from readers relating to end-game content. When you go through development, how do you decide how to set the difficulty? For example, the amount of DPS required for each particular content.

Yoshida: When we make battle content, first we determine a minimum assumed item level required to clear. Then, we determine the total amount of party damage required to clear, taking a minimal amount of damage from tanks and healers into account during this calculation.

What do you mean by minimal?

Yoshida: Basically it's the damage from tank auto-attacks and the basic skill rotation used in order to maintain hate. We add this to the party damage needed. However, we often use zero in the calculation for damage required from healers. In other words, we only take into account the amount of damage necessary to perform as a tank or a healer and we don't take them into account as actively participating in attacking. For the clear assumption on DPS, we calculate the 100% value for the item level and we reduce that by 10 to 15 percent for the amount required to clear.

But it's often actually the case that healers do participate in attacking.

Yoshida: Well, the calculations are based on the item level assumed during development.

Ah, and that's different from the minimum item level required to try the content.

Yoshida: Yes. So if you try to clear it at a lower item level, it will be necessary for tanks and healers to participate in attacking. The difference in skill levels for DPS players will be a factor. If you're below the 85 to 90 percent damage assumption, you'll have to fill in the gap with DPS from tanks and healers. If the DPS work together and think about total party damage, it may also help to break through.

So healers may need to participate in the attack if there wouldn't otherwise be enough. Well, even if there is, healers may also attack just to provide a margin.

Yoshida: Yeah. Especially in Savage because it is difficult to deal damage while handling the mechanics I think there is some opportunity there.

Put simply: While they may not take Healer (or tank DPS, for that matter) into account at all, they do assume that DPS will be able to deal around 90% of their "100% value" in a live fight at an item level that's above the minimum item level to enter to compensate. It logically has to be above the minimum because, well... the minimum is the minimum and anything that's "different" from the minimum needs to be higher.

Where exactly the item level lies: Nobody knows. What they mean with "100% value": Nobody knows, but seeing as mechanics apparently make it harder to perform it and it's a wholly calculated value, rather than an empirical one, they probably mean potential DPS on a dummy.

De facto, though, he's saying that Healer DPS is mandatory if you attempt the content at the minimum item level to enter (or anywhere below that mystical assumed item level). Which is pretty much what Tridus said as well.
Once you overgear the content, it's no longer mandatory, because the devs assume your DPS will overgear it in their calculations (and be exceptional players to boot).

It reads like:"We expect DPS to carry tanks and healers.", because the amount of skill and effort the DPS need to meet that assumption is miles and bounds more than healers and tanks would need to add some DPS, not to mention the onus of gearing up prior. And that's why players pretty much ignore whatever Yoshida has to say on that matter. Like, he tried to reinforce the notion that healers shouldn't be expected to DPS again later. Nobody cared. And that will continue until he changes the way healing is designed.

[Tridus]

This first part that I bolded, what this says is that healer DPS, specifically WHM in this case, should increase along with everyone else through level 60. Which makes sense. Furthermore, this is a separate statement from the next, and no matter how you want to dissect it, it boils down to 4 DPS and tanks at an assumed ilv (whatever that means), and then they even cut it by 10-15% (likely to allow for KOs and recovery). Then, in a separate statement: "Healer DPS is not taken into account when this is set". Whatever ilv they're clearing stuff at, what's for certain is that healer DPS isn't a factor AT ALL. If this is a higher ilv than what is currently available to the playerbase, then I humbly bow and thank you for the correction. If not, then I don't know, the group needs to perform better I guess?

The "expected level" includes normal mode gear from that tier, which you won't have in significant quantity the first week of savage when it launches at the same time. The expectation is most groups will gear up some before being able to tackle savage. Anybody not doing that because they're doing it in that first week will be flat out unable to clear without healer DPS. Exactly where they put that cutoff point isn't something they tell us, but they did tell us it exists:

Certainly for people who are at world's first level, their goal is to clear it at as low an item level as possible, lower than the one assumed during development. So if you look at the fight and figure out that if it's not numerically possible to clear with four DPS and tanks, you'll need to make up the gap with DPS from healers. Then when those publish clear videos and other people see the healers DPSing, they might think that healers need to be DPSing even though its a situation that only arose because their clear would have otherwise been impossible.

Looks like Zojha said it well right above me.

Not only do I frequent the tanking forums. I also play one, and have ran it through all content through lv60 since I don't have SB. The majority of it synced. No one, and I do mean no one is going to even attempt to defend an idle tank. The controversy on that forum that is even remotely related to healer DPS are tanks that stay in tank stance 100% of the time, and spam their agro combo. Again, this is the equivalent to a heals-only healer. They are doing the bare minimum by doing this, and generating more agro than is necessary on trash and bosses (similar to over healing), but they are doing nothing to add to the damage pool other than their innate agro combo potencies, which are negligible in comparison to an offensive tank and still keeping hate.

That is the most closely related one, agreed. It's telling that it's not equivalent, though. A tank doing that is certainly playing suboptimally, but they're doing *something*. They may not realize they're doing something wrong, or they may be concerned about their gear necessitating the extra mitigation, or whatever. But it's different than "spam threat combo a few times then eat some popcorn". To me, overly cautious tanks are more akin to a healer who is active but is overly cautious (stuff like keeping Succor up all the time, not letting anyone get below 90% and such) but who does get some DPS in when they can. That person is trying, and at the end of the day that's all you can really ask of players with wildly varying skill levels.

I don't think we're really disagreeing here, either. At some point it's just about categorization and that's not terribly important.

I agree with you 100%. The psychology doesn't even come from other games; it comes from the term itself, "Healer".

I'm not so sure about that. Clerics in D&D are in most editions among the best healers in the game, but they're designed so they can easily turn into offensive wrecking machines without sacrificing the core of their healing ability. Even in a lot of the older FF games, the healer characters had offense they were more than capable of using. The fine young princess in your signature being a good example.

The "always heal" mentality is pretty strong in MMOs.

And it is the game we have. Like I pointed out earlier; heals-only healers are still clearing content. This in itself indisputably makes healer DPS mandatory entirely false. Don't put the knife to my throat though. If you have an issue with that, then the issue lies with the design of our current content, which I already stated is a problem. But I also stated it is not as big of a problem as everyone makes it out to be. If someone one wants to argue with that, I am all ears.

I'm afraid it is the same issue. Because it is not the game people want to have, it is the game we currently have. That's the reason why heals-only healers are on the defense, and the offensively minded propose a change in gameplay. But is it really so bad that you believe the way healing is currently designed needs to be changed? Before you answer that, don't think I am implying that this is the wrong mentality. However, I really want you to think about the proposed changes and the long-term effect on the game and the community. Does QoL get better? Queue times for everyone? Savage clear rates? Does the game overall, improve over something like all healers all of a sudden adopting the 'DPS first, heal when needed' mentality. If you truly believe that, then fine. I respect that.

I tend to think healing needs to be changed because it's too strong. When you can burst heal people to full in a couple of seconds and thus nullify any non-lethal damage immediately and then go back to DPSing while basically ignoring that MP exists, something's wrong with the design. It backs the encounter designers into a corner where they have to use lethal damage or vuln up stacks to threaten people outside of savage because little else really can. You're never going to threaten a WHM's MP with periodic group damage, and when you can't run the healers OOM you've removed resource management as an aspect from the role. It's not a good thing.

That would lead to more uptime on healing by necessity because it would take longer to recover heavy damage, which in turn discourages people taking avoidable damage that isn't lethal... as opposed to some of the "nah I'll just stand in it because moving hurts my uptime, heal through it" mentality that's becoming more prevalent. That doesn't exist in games where healing is expensive and too much unnecessary healing will ruin your day. Of course, my first MMO was WoW, where in any difficult content healer DPS was not a significant thing.

The problem is that changing the model significantly would have reprecussions. While more healing focused folks like me would like it, people who like the current model wouldn't and some of them would probably flip to DPS (hi Moro!). There's probably a happy medium in there somewhere.

[KisaiTenshi]

I'm afraid it is the same issue. Because it is not the game people want to have, it is the game we currently have. That's the reason why heals-only healers are on the defense, and the offensively minded propose a change in gameplay. But is it really so bad that you believe the way healing is currently designed needs to be changed? Before you answer that, don't think I am implying that this is the wrong mentality. However, I really want you to think about the proposed changes and the long-term effect on the game and the community. Does QoL get better? Queue times for everyone? Savage clear rates? Does the game overall, improve over something like all healers all of a sudden adopting the 'DPS first, heal when needed' mentality. If you truly believe that, then fine. I respect that.

Look at how the changes to WHM in SB was initially presented, there was frothing at the mouth from the "dps healers" for improvements that don't fit their meta. It's clear that SE expects healers to constantly be casting heals, not DPS, otherwise this change would not have had so much screaming over it from the NA players.

Like the only way to make any content "mandatory Cure/Physick/Benefic" is to make all the 5.x content be a variation on the escort-a-tissue-paper-NPC quests. You know, the kind that are loathed in all games because the NPC can't take more than 2-3 hits (eg Brayflox Longstop, boss 2.) We have some variations of this in the game in the job quests (like SCH's level 65 quest, and WHM's level 70 quest) but you can't make an entire team content based on that. The closest we ever seen this is in Labyrinth of the Ancients's Thanatos boss, with the magic pots, and it can be zerged so fast now that everyone ignores them. There are FATES's that have this aspect to them, but they can be solo'd.

The ultimate troll from SE would be for 5.0 to have no additional DPS for healers (eg the dps scale stops at level 70) and instead fold cure/benefic/psysick into a "Cure IV" instant-cast mechanic that changes from Cure/Benefic/Psysick I, II, III, IV the longer you wait for it on cooldown. Then on WHM fold Cure III, Medica and Medica II into the same mechanic, where the range increases the longer you wait for it (hitting it once creates an AOE circle that grows, and hitting it again casts it, nothing else can be cast during this.) Then push Regen/Diurnal Aspected Benefic and the Medica II/Diurnal Aspected Helios into a regen-only effect that overwrites each other and Whispering Dawn, instead of stacking. Then for the shielding side, give Stone-Skin back to WHM-only, make it overwrite Galvanize and Nocturnal aspected Helios/Benefic.

The goal here would be for all healers to have a raw heals, and a shield kit, and in 4 player content they can use both, and thus have no excuse to be doing nothing. In 8-player content, one healer would take heals the other would take shields. Unfortunately since it necessitates making all healers have the same basic cure/shield tools, just in different forms, it doesn't offer any actual way to differentiate those basic skills otherwise content can't be designed to use it. That's the problem we have currently. Shields need to be deployed on tank busters or the character dies, not reduced HP. Regen is to counter hp damaging debuffs. Raw heals are for countering raw damage. Bring back Esuna/leeches/Exalted Detriment (at level 18) for cleaning off the more powerful removable debuffs, and free up one Role action slot.

Simply adding Stone V/Aero IV to the WHM kit replacing Stone IV and Aero III, does nothing to change gameplay. AST and WHM have pretty much the same healing and dps kit, where as scholar has all of Arcanists kit, and that's why it's such a pain to balance, and why they haven't actually received any new DPS skills since level 50, rather they got Ruin III/IV as Broil/Broil II with higher potency and higher MP cost, but no combo mechanics.

And if SE were to really troll us, they would delete Swiftcast and Surecast from healers, and change how raise/resurrect/ascend work to automatically have "swiftcast+surecast" applied to it if the player has cast any three healing casts before it that didn't result in any overhealing.

And if we want the ultimate troll from SE, they would turn auto-heal off during the duty.

But I digress, here I am describing how SE could make changes that would likely result in rage-quits by people who want the healer to be an extra DPS, instead of a healer, but it would resolve the "lazy healer" issue by making "do nothing, spam heals that aren't needed" not an option.

[IttyBitty]

It's clear that SE expects healers to constantly be casting heals

The way content is designed and always has been designed says otherwise.

[EaMett]

The healer dps meta comes from a few things.

- SE wanted healer leveling to be somewhat attractive so they gave them tools to dps more (traditionally leveling a healer was always significantly harder to do). Give healers significant dps and their contribution to dps in parties suddenly becomes a big deal.
- FFXIV doesn't have a healer role separation. No tank specific healer, or melee, or party specific. The "all content can be done by all healers" attitude means that they have no leverage in creating high sustained HPS output fights without locking out some healers like SCH. In the same way they can't create high mitigation fights without locking out WHM. etc. etc. They probably wouldn't even agree to content with tank busters that REQUIRE mitigation because that would lock out WHM-WHM comps.
- FFXIV's attitude towards most content being casual also means that CC has no use in 99% of content (thanks eureka/potd for that 1%). This means that there is no incentive to take a healer or even a class with CC into content. This could've been a way for square to force specific classes into content even though they weren't the "meta class" for said content.

Honestly, I don't see any of the above changing. Despite Yoshi wanting healer only healers, they kinda painted themselves into a corner.

[MoroMurasaki]

But I digress, here I am describing how SE could make changes that would likely result in rage-quits by people who want the healer to be an extra DPS, instead of a healer, but it would resolve the "lazy healer" issue by making "do nothing, spam heals that aren't needed" not an option.

Know what else would resolve it?

People not being lazy and entitled.

A lot simpler from a dev standpoint too...

[Ghishlain]

Look at how the changes to WHM in SB was initially presented, there was frothing at the mouth from the "dps healers" for improvements that don't fit their meta. It's clear that SE expects healers to constantly be casting heals, not DPS, otherwise this change would not have had so much screaming over it from the NA players.

S-E's intent on something doesn't mean it's the optimal way to do it. Look at all the raid skips that have occurred (A11S Lapis skip, O5S Train skip, etc.). For the intent of "optimal clear times", doing content that allows for skips leads to faster clears. This also means that optimal clearly deviates from developer intent.

I'm personally okay with heal-only healers, but there is also a reason why the most effective and optimal healers in the game are those "healer DPS" because more DPS from the healers = boss die faster = faster clear times and less total healing required for the content.

The Most Effective Tactic Available to healers is to maximize GCD usage with highly effective choices which generally boils down to "DPS when you don't need to heal". This will continue to be the meta way to player healer at until we see either a content design change, a healer kit design change, or both - which then may lead to the meta way to play healer being "spam heals until your tanks and DPS kill the boss" or at least some variation where there's a more even split between healing and DPSing.

[Miste]

If you tell a party "You don't pay my sub" just because they ask you not to idle (AKA standing around doing nothing) when you have nothing to heal then you have immediately shown you only care about yourself and don't care to contribute as much as you can to help the group or try to work as a team.

You are being uncooperative, stubborn, not willing to alter even a bit to cast a few DPS spells in order to at least show you respect the wishes of the party you got that is requesting that you to contribute as much as they are. None of the other party members get to stand idle...so if they request that you also do the same amount of work that seems legit to me; team effort and all.

If you openly show you don't care about the rest of the people in the party then don't be surprised if the next thing you see is a black screen and a "You have been dismissed from the duty."

Why should they care about you or your time if you openly prove you don't give a crap about theirs?

If the majority of the party seems to not care if you do any healer DPS or not then whatever...slide by doing minimal, but just know it is pretty lazy when you could at least do some DPS instead of zero.

You should want to help your groups as much as you can though...I don't get people who purposefully don't cast any DPS spells even though they could...some kind of backwards principle "I could contribute more, but I feel I shouldn't have to so I won't."

The game just isn't designed for pure healers right now. They may eventually change things, but it definitely isn't how the game works right now.